IoT or Internet of Things is the latest buzz word these days. Do you have any idea what it means? In simple words, it refers to a virtual internet connection from things, people, and more and more devices at home and at work.   Everything in our surrounding environment is allowed to communicate with each other without any human intervention. Internet of Things can definitely be beneficial in our daily lives.

Applications of Internet of Things IoT helps to increase the speed, productivity and proactive monitoring of products and services. With such great benefits, efficiencies will increase and savings will occur. Sensors will free-up personnel from monitoring tasks and enhance productivity. You  would no longer need to remember to turn off the oven after the cake is done. You would not need to switch on the lights when you enter a room. You would not have to worry if you forget to turn off the AC when you leave your house. Your home would do it for you.  IoT is aimed at automating our lives by improving efficiency. This technology monitors behavior with the help of motion sensors, facial recognition etc. It identifies and makes the required changes automatically to the lighting or temperature of a home.

Cradlepoint products can help in development of internet of things.  Cradlepoint’s product line includes:

4g LTE Routers

This helps to secure companies’ networking over 3G, 4g, /LTE delivers the highest possible wireless performance. Cradlepoint’s easy-to-deploy and easy-to-manage solutions harness the power and simplicity of the cloud with a wide range of options and customizable configurations ensure an optimal fit for any organization.

Remote Router Management with Enterprise Cloud Manager (ECM)

• Zero-touch deployment
• One-click firmware upgrades
• Remotely configure individual and groups of
• routers
• View 3G/4G statistics for data usage, signal
• strength and uptime
• Create alerts based on usage, connection,
• config, security and more

Cloud-based Security Applications

With profits, privacy, and reputation at stake, security is business critical. Cradlepoint devices and software offer best-in-breed solutions for all types of security architectures.

The above mentioned Cradlepoint product and services can be procured through Enterprise Systems , by visiting our website on www.enter-sys.com.

By the end of 2020, we can expect about $2 trillion of economic benefit from connected devices. These devices will be in products like jet engines, vending machines, and other appliances. Internet of Things will have a huge impact on digital businesses also as it will facilitate new business models and improve efficiency at the same time. Currently, IoT technologies and business models that support IoT are quite immature. However, they are used across a wide range of industries. Enterprises and organizations all over the world should make plans and preparations to utilize IoT and get the maximum benefit from it.

Security

Information Technology has many security considerations and in the same manner, IoT faces unique security challenges. Addressing these issues is a must. Users are bound to trust IoT devices and related data collection services as they are integrated in our daily lives. As the data us exposed to the IoT devices and applications, there are great chances of theft or data breaches. Organizations all over the world are looking for new ways to overcome this concern.

Wrap Up

IoT comes with various challenges, but the main idea is to overcome these issues and make full use of this technology to simplify our daily lives.

Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Trunking

Session Initiation Protocol or SIP is a packet-switched communications protocol which provides IP-protocol based connectivity between an organization’s internal PBX (Private Branch Exchange) and the PSTN network (Public Switched Telephone Network). The type of calls which can be handled by SIP varies from a typical voice call to a collaborative multimedia conference session i.e. the entire range of communication media.
The connection established over internet is virtual in nature i.e. the voice and/or data does not travel over a dedicated communication line marked for each individual call. Instead the call is routed in the form of packets over an internet line using either TCP (Transmission Control Protocol), or UDP (User Datagram Protocol) or SCTP (Stream Control Transmission Protocol).
The number of voice connections which can be simultaneously opened is only limited by the bandwidth of the internet network over which the packets travel. For secure communications, the transmissions can be secured using TLS or Transport Layer Security.
SIP is the underlying switching technology used in VOIP-based telephone systems.

What is Primary Rate Interface (PRI) Trunking

Primary Rate Interface or PRI is a circuit-switched communications protocol used to connect an organizations internal PBX to a PSTN. A PRI-based trunk line, i.e. the communications line connecting the PBX to the PSTN, has dedicated communication lines for each voice call connection.
In the US, the PRI Trunk lines consist of a T-1 line which has 24 circuit-switched channels which consist of 23 voice channels and 1 control channel which carries control information. The total line rate of a T-1 line is 1.544 Megabytes per second.
In Europe, the PRI Trunk lines consist of an E-1 line which has 32 circuit-switched channels, consisting of 30 voice channels and 2 channels for carrying control information. The total line rate of a E-1 line is 2.048 Megabytes per second.
Initially PRI trunking was based on analog transmission, but with ISDNs (Integrated Services Digital Networks) being used for PRI Trunking, digital transmissions became possible.

Why chose SIP trunking over PRI trunking

SIP trunking has certain inherent advantages over PRI trunking due to its very packet-switched nature versus circuit-switched nature of PRI trunking. Let us look at the various advantages SIP offers over PRI which makes it the de-facto choice for organizations setting up new IP PBX systems, or modernizing their existing PBX system’s connectivity with the PSTN, all over the world –

Advantage 1. Total Cost of Ownership is significantly lower for SIP trunking

SIP is based on virtual technology. From the packets travelling over the connections, the connections themselves, to the switching of calls – everything is virtual or software-based.
PRI on the other hand needs physical terminations for each line and timeslot channel. Moreover, a physical mechanism is required for connection end-points for both data and voice transmissions.
The virtual nature of connection and transmission for SIP makes it much cheaper than PRI-based trunking. SIP turns out to be cheaper in installation (or capital expenditure), maintenance (or operational expenditure) and even has the advantage of lower call costs with least-cost routing feature being provided in-built in SIP systems. This drastically reduces the total cost of ownership for SIP based trunking vis-à-vis PRI based trunking.

Advantage 2. Scalability is cheaper for SIP trunking than with PRI trunking

While SIP runs on a packet-switched network, the number of calls which can take place in parallel are limited only by the backbone internet connection’s bandwidth. Having more channels for communications requires only increasing the network bandwidth which can be done on a temporary need-basis as well.
PRI however is limited by the number of channels (23 for T-1 or 30 for E-1). If more parallel connections are needed, then new line(s) need to be laid down which means extra fixed capital investment.

Advantage 3. Failover and redundancy is possible with SIP trunking

In PRI trunking, any outage in the physical line (T-1 or E-1) between the PBX and the PSTN leads to failure of services.
With SIP such PSTN-specific outages can be easily handled with failover systems built on top of redundant connections with multiple PSTNs. Using IP-based networks, an organization can have connections with multiple PSTNs. In the event of an outage of a particular PSTN’s network, the connections of other PSTN networks can handle extra load and there is no outage and consequent disruption in telecommunication services of the enterprise using SIP trunking.

How Enterprise Systems provides SIP trunking for businesses

Enterprise Systems has developed set of custom solutions for providing SIP trunking for businesses which are either setting up new IP-based software PBX or have already setup traditional hardware PBX and now want to utilize the benefits that SIP trunking provides.

Solution SIP-A: For a traditional PBX System (with SIP-unaware devices)

In this scenario Enterprise Systems recommends a solution which uses a VoIP gateway to convert the PBX interfaces to Ethernet while packetizing the voice traffic for transport over the IP-based trunk to the SIP service provider network. In this case a multiport gateway is used to connect the legacy system with the service provider network.

Solution SIP-B: For new IP-PBX System (for IP devices that are already SIP enabled)

In this scenario, Enterprise System recommends a solution in which the IP devices would typically interact with the trunk directly. In addition, this solution also has provisions for setting up advanced features which include Quality of Service (QoS), call admission control, billing and security. However, for enabling the advanced features intermediate devices may be needed. The intermediate devices which are typically utilized for such purposed include session border controller and an IP PBX.
Also packaged with this solution are features such as voice enabled IVR (Interactive Voice Response), call parking and inter-system integration between subsystems.

There’s a new craze in town. Networking, that used to be a complex maze of uncontrolled data packets, are now being harnessed and much better organized. All of this became possible with the advent of SDN. Sounds like a tough nut to crack, right? Well, what do you know?  The nut will be cracked and eaten today.

The nut cracker:

SDN stands for Software Defined Networking. What may be wondering is what the heck is that? By definition, SDN is a system which separates the network control plane from the forwarding plane so that network administrators can shape traffic from a centralized control console without the need of touching individual switches.

To get a clear view, think of it as a ‘daddy’ for the data packets. Who doesn’t know that children can be very disturbing and chaotic if they are left unrestrained? But now, with SDN, data packets can’t move from one terminal to another without the permission of their dad. In the SDN there is a ‘controller’. When each data packet hits a switch, the switch itself asks the controller about where to send it. The controller then measures a suitable path and establishes the connection.

SDN gives businesses more agility, flexibility and quicker response times. SDN works much more efficiently with cloud services. Handling today’s BIG amount of data is another reason why IT people are more inclined to gravitate toward SDN these days.

The INNOVATORS in the industry:

Today’s networking industry is growing at an incredible pace.  The Internet of Things (IoT) is going to greatly accelerate this pace to breakneck speed. The total sales revenue in the networking industry in 2013 was 178 billion US Dollars.   Two innovators in the networking industry are AVAYA and ARISTA.

Avaya has a unique end-to-end SDN architecture that removes packet layers to create a network that is dynamic, agile and simple. This results in faster time-to-service, dependable business continuity and increased efficiency enabling you to run your network in pace with your business. Lower cost is another factor to consider in favor of using AVAYA.

Arista Networks is the next big shot in the industry. It has broken down the whole market of high speed data center switches with two basic innovations, Arista EOS and VXLAN. Arista EOS is built to be open and standards based. Its modern architecture is better reliable and it is also uniquely programmable at all system levels. EOS provides an ideal platform for their customers to automate their IT workflows by integrating with 3^rd parties. It also enables their customers to gain visibility over their physical and virtual networks. Arista has also pioneered non blocking network performance and constant cross-sectional bandwidth availability through their Virtual Extensible Local Area Network.

Contact Enterprise Systems to find out more and in some cases receive a free or heavily discounted Proof of Concept.

Apple struck up a partnership with IBM a little more than a year ago.  The partnership, “IBM MobileFirst for iOS” centers around Apple and IBM creating more than 100 vertical-focused enterprise apps built only for the iPhone and iPad.  The verticals targeted by IBM for this initiative have been retail, healthcare, banking, travel and transportation, insurance and telecommunications.

The partnership uses IBM’s Fiberlink MaaS360 for mobile device management (MDM) and Apple is standardizing on IBM’s big data applications and analytics.  Additionally, IBM sells industry-focused iPhones and iPads as a bundle.   Private application and productivity suites are available to IBM customers, and services are available on IBM’s Bluemix development platform.

On the heels of that deal, Apple announced on August 31^st a partnership with Cisco.  The partnership is aimed at integrating iOS devices and applications with Cisco’s networking products.  A key component is making iOS devices work more seamlessly with cloud, mobile, and premises-based collaboration tools such as Cisco Spark, Telepresence and WebEx.

On top of this Apple is building a coalition of at least 40 technology companies with a similar partnership goal.

What it appears is IBM is targeting larger corporations, while many of the 40 technology partners in the “mobility partner program” will target small-and-medium-sized businesses.

The opinion of some is that Apple is attempting to bring the passion of their consumer products into the workplace.

Will the strategy be a huge success for Apple?  Only time will tell.  It is my opinion that the iPad is much more a “consumption” device than a “production” device.  The last two or three years when tablets really took off, there was the common comment made by pundits that it was “the end of the PC”.  As we can all see, that did not happen.  I believe the reason that did not happen is that the tablet also is more of a “consumption” device than a “production” device.  When it comes to producing content, be it CAD, technical manuals, data processing etc. people in general (at least up until the millennial generation) are more comfortable with the power of a PC with a physical keyboard and mouse.  There is evidence that the iPad is being trialed in the business world.  Just go to your local Chili’s restaurant and you will see them on the table with interactive commercials and a menu.  Again, that is in a consumption role and it is a perfect fit.

We hear a lot about SDN lately. It is getting almost as pervasive a buzzword as “cloud”.

What is SDN? Software-defined networking is a new paradigm for server network traffic control that allows network administrators to manage network services through a lower level of functionality. That is by breaking up the system that makes decisions about where traffic is sent (the control plane) from the underlying systems that forward traffic to the selected destination (the data plane).

In a nutshell, it is basically a way to simplify network management by removing the control of network traffic from the Ethernet Layer 3 switching to the Application Layer 7. Think of a traditional network: Layer 7 applications hosted on servers and clients (and other devices) are connected to an Ethernet core and edge topology by those servers. The Ethernet core and edge is then configured for optimum traffic transport to and from those Layer 7 applications, with resiliency against failure . To put it simply think of it as the servers are the parking garages, which deliver the cars to the Layer 3 core; which in turn is the traffic cop deciding the most efficient route for the cars leaving the server to get to the other servers. The Layer 3 edge switches in turn are the freeways to get to the other servers. With SDN, the server becomes the traffic cop itself, and directs the traffic directly onto the freeways.

An open source protocol (OpenFlow) will allow network administrators to dynamically configure applications and network traffic changes on SDN controllers instead of a Layer 3 core. In addition to faster configuration times, it also allows for centralized management, since network flow will be flattened , appearing to applications and policy engines as a single, logical switch. It is a goal to have automated SDN programs for network and applications management, which administrators can write themselves because the programs will not depend on proprietary software.

There is a networking industry supported open source group known as the OpenDaylight Project that was formed in April of 2013. This group’s purpose is to facilitate an open source framework to accelerate the adoption of SDN as well as foster new innovation around it’s functionality.

As noted, it is built around an open-source protocol , known as OpenFlow, with industry giants such as Cisco, Brocade, Avaya, Citrix, Ericsson, HP, IBM, Juniper Networks, Microsoft, NEC, Nuage Networks, PLUMgrid, Red Hat , VMware as well as newcomers Arista Networks, and Big Switch Networks committed to providing software and engineering resources for the project. One will note that only Brocade, Cisco, Avaya, Juniper and HP are traditional networking companies.

One of the reasons the traditional networking players are involved is obviously to have a hand in developing OpenDaylight’s open source framework that will define the future of an open source SDN platform. This will be crucial to sustaining the business models of the traditional players. The first code from the OpenDaylight Project, named Hydrogen, was released in February 2014. Industry reaction to the OpenDaylight Project has been a mixed bag, while reaction to the goals of the open architecture/ administration of the Linux Foundation have been mostly positive.